The National Consumers League (NCL), a US-based consumer advocacy organization, initiated legal proceedings against Starbucks last week.
The legal action contends that Starbucks, the international coffee company, has falsely advertised its tea and coffee as entirely ethically sourced, despite obtaining supplies from farms in Kenya, Brazil, and Guatemala linked to human rights violations.
The filing claims that there is extensive evidence indicating that the company depends on farms and cooperatives engaged in egregious labor and human rights abuses.
Submitted in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, the lawsuit highlights Starbucks’ efforts to portray itself as a frontrunner in ethical coffee and tea sourcing. Contrary to the promotional assertions of ethical sourcing, the case contends that Starbucks’ marketing “misleads consumers and neglects to communicate the extensive sourcing from coffee and the farms and cooperatives with a documented history of child labor, forced labor, sexual harassment, assault, and other human rights abuses.”
Sally Greenberg, chief executive officer of NCL, said, “On every bag of coffee and box of K-cups sitting on grocery store shelves, Starbucks is telling consumers a lie. The facts are clear: there are significant human rights and labour abuses across Starbucks’ supply chain, and consumers have a right to know exactly what they’re paying for. NCL is committed to exposing and reining in these deceptive practices and holding Starbucks accountable for living up to its claims.”
The group said in its court filing, “Starbucks’ failure to adopt meaningful reforms to its coffee and tea sourcing practices in the face of these critiques and documented labour abuses on its source farms is wholly inconsistent with a reasonable consumer’s understanding of what it means to be ‘committed to 100% ethical’ sourcing”.
“Similarly, Starbucks’ failure to disclose to consumers the unreliability of these certification programmes and their limitations as a guarantee of ethical sourcing are misleading omissions material to the decision-making of a reasonable consumer.”
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